I cute two strips of 6 oz carbon that will sandwich between the stringers and the exterior EPS offcuts. I know that to the unintiated this will look like a garage floor with some polyethelene sheeting, but in fact it's a wet out table. I mixed up about 6 oz of epoxy and poured enough on each carbon strip to fully wet it out, reserving some to paint onto the blank.

I knew someone would appreciate my fine array of tools used in this build. Thanks Art, you are gentleman and a scholar (for not calling me on my BS )

The theory behind carbon on the rails, as implemented by IS is that it adds stiffness around the perimeter. The IS boards have no stringer, instead gaining stiffness by the two plys of wood laminate that sandwich the core, and of course the extra helpings of resin on the exterior that create that gorgeous shine.

I'm not looking for extra stiffness, perse. I've reduced the thickness of my stringers here and will also reduce the glassing schedule for the final lamination. My intent is to increase flex return and also to help reduce breakage...typically when boards break, it starts at the rail and goes across.

Wood has great properties for flex and flex return, but two issues are:

1) Inconsistency between pieces and even within the same piece of wood - or e.wood, and

2) With repeated flex cycles it breaks down and loses responsiveness.

Hopefully, the carbon will extend the life and add some consistency to the amount of flex and flex return.

I am fascinated by the hollow carbon boards as done my the defunct Hydroepic and the current Aviso. I attempted a lost foam hollow carbon last year, but it came out at 7 pounds before hotcoat. It was a slug. I'd like to pursue that again, but I can't seem to find a way that makes the board light enough...the little bit of foam we have in the core maybe weighs 12 oz, but reinforcing the skin enough to eliminate that 12 oz takes pounds of resin!

I've done carbon tape around the rails. IMO, it takes about 2 layers of 6 oz CF to equal the same "ridgity" of an interior wood. I also found it exceptionally hard to work with over the rails. It's so stiff it wants to delaminate while the epoxy is geling. When I would bag it, which gave me a nice tight lamination, and I attepted a cut lap, the resin would penetrate the masking tape and created a mess. As I noted somewhere above, sanding the carbon also left me a dust mess on the white foam.

I think that over the years, the formula for surfboards has been perimeter weighting. We see this with rail laps - when there are 3 layers of glass over the rails, that becomes the heaviest part of the board. When I tried to balance the use of carbon on the rails, with the glass elsewhere, I wound up actually reducing weight on the rails.

There was an interesting advertisement not too long ago. Firewire, before they started offering the Suspension System of Carbon rods, used carbon wrapped rails, then when they started offering the SS their ad's talked disparagingly about those carbon wraps as just cosmetics.

I guess that I'm not a big fan of carbon mostly because I don't like working with it on any curved surface

It looks like the decks are the Corecell and Balsa rails, but I can't quite tell what the black line under that balsa rail cap. It looks like it's maybe just paint, to hide the transition of the corecell to the balsa, but why not go all the way around the tail?

Dang, another board? and another type of construction? Dude, your always onto new contibutions to the sport. Go Jeff,go. I recently had considered the effects of carbon rails, so it will be interesting to hear your feedback on this project. Look forward to seeing another fine product.

We have a full load for testing this weekend, the folks from Inland Surfer shipped us down a Sweet Spot, plus we have the Flamed Surftech and then this one. I just finished the last lamination on this one...actually it was this morning I'm interested to see if the little bit of carbon is noticeable. I'll keep ya posted and thanks for the prop's!